I'm Fine
by Fairady
Summary: Now I'm older and I find I can't sleep in the Dark. Can't stand opening my eyes and not knowing what is there.


Disclaimer: I own not and make no money off of this.

Warnings: None.

Notes: Inspired by a gifset over on Tumblr. It hit the feels.

I'm Fine  
by Fairady

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It started with the dark. In the dark, _because_ of the dark? It didn't matter. All that mattered was that it was dark when Stiles jerked awake, heart pounding and breath short because _someone _was in his room watching him.

An unfortunate familiarity with exactly that kind of situation made him automatically bite back the cry that wanted to escape him as he fumbled for the lamp next to the bed. Bright light flooded the room and Stiles blinked rapidly as his eyes took precious seconds to adjust.

The room was empty. Stiles looked around again. Checking his closet, under the bed, and out the still closed window just to be sure. He found nothing, not a single sign that anyone had been there and his heart-rate slowed down as he flicked the lamp off and collapsed on his bed. Just another dream courtesy of the weirdness that was his life. Nothing to be worried about. It still took him several hours to fall back asleep.

That was the first time it happened.

The waking up thing happened again, and again. It became a weekly thing that spilled into a daily —nightly— thing. Stiles jerking awake from a sound, dreamless sleep with the utter certainty that _he wasn't alone _until it got to the point where he didn't go to sleep anymore. Just laid in bed with the light on and eyes open just so he could prove to himself that there was no one there. Staying awake and on watch until the sun came up and the false sense of security it brought allowed him to catch a few hours of sleep.

The sounds had been next. Or maybe they'd been going on the whole time and Stiles just hadn't noticed before. A creak when —he knew from a lifetime living in the same house— there should have been a groan. A faint whisper of sound that could have been his Dad speaking in the next room, or the television being left on downstairs. Small things like that which could be easily ignored.

What wasn't so easy to ignore was his name being called when he _knew _he was alone in the house. The unintelligible mutter of conversation that stopped when he looked at the empty spot it came from. None of which his Dad ever seemed to hear, even when he was right next to Stiles. Not that Stiles had asked, they didn't really talk much these days, but he was sure his Dad would mention hearing an unexpected voice while they were in the kitchen not talking. It made him jumpy. Jumpier. Had him paying too much attention to sounds. Everyday sounds turning sinister because he wasn't sure if he was actually hearing them or not.

The creeping sense of paranoia was neither a surprise or unexpected visitor. A fine sense of paranoia was what kept Stiles if not safe then at least alive. It made him tense up even in his own house, kept him on edge and alert even when he was in his own room alone. Made him take to keeping a kitchen knife nearby at all times. Not that a _kitchen _knife would do much good against the things that came into his life.

It wasn't logical, just like sleeping when only when the sun was up, but by that point Stiles wasn't really operating on logic anymore.

Sure, something supernatural had been his first thought. It was also his second, third, and fourth thought. A quick Google search had netted him plenty of interesting stuff about ghosts one night. And it would truly suck if that was the problem because there was no consensus at all in how to exorcise a ghost on the web. Well, _a _problem because there were actually two. The second problem was that his search hadn't just turned up stuff about ghosts.

Any research he did always led to a paper or article about mental health and specific delusions. It was inevitable really, and Stiles would usually glance over the psychobabble and go straight for checking the citations for good leads on where to look next. But those were usually few and far between. Except that wasn't the case this time.

There were more than just a few papers, more than just a few websites, and they all talked about one thing. PTSD.

Stiles had scoffed a bit at that. PTSD was a thing, and he knew about it in the vague way everyone knows. It was something soldiers overseas dealt with, not teenagers in the middle of the US. Stiles had skipped those links and devoted himself to exorcisms and house cleansings that were ridiculously complex.

The more he researched though, the more it came up, and he couldn't help reading an article or two. A story here or there. Then the Wikipedia page and all it's accompanying links. Symptoms and stories that added up and clicked into place the more and more he read. Until he wasn't looking up exorcisms anymore.

It was an explanation, one he didn't like one bit. It made no sense. Sure, life'd been shitty in a dangerous way the past year but it wasn't _that_ bad. Relatively speaking not much had happened to him, not when compared with the others. Everyone else was fine. Well, not _fine _fine, but they weren't having psychotic breakdowns over it.

Maybe.

Hopefully.

The point was that Stiles should be fine. Things were quiet in a way they hadn't been for far too long. No one was dying at all. There was no reason for this to be happening to him. No reason at all. So he stopped researching and started dealing with it.

He was fine.

And if he stayed awake each night with the light on, window and door locked, earbuds firmly in place, and a kitchen knife under his fingertips as he waited for the sun to rise?

Well, no one had to know about it because he was _fine_.

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End file.
